Doubts about cost and accountability dominated a debate on the county's proposed home-rule charter Tuesday at Franklin & Marshall College.

Four members of the 11-member Government Study Commission slugged it out over the merits of a Nov. 4 ballot question that will ask voters if they want to change the form of county government.

During the debate, sponsored by the League of Women Voters, pro-home-rule commissioners Carol Phillips and Jim Miller argued with Greg Sahd and Jim Bednar, who oppose the change.

Among other changes, the proposed charter calls for expanding the board of county commissioners from three members to five; having an executive appointed by the commissioners run the county government at the board's direction; and eliminating the row offices of register of wills, prothonotary and clerk of courts.

Sahd and Bednar argued that a change is unnecessary and that home rule would shift control away from voters and lead to increased taxes and bigger government. The charter would create the elected position of clerk of judicial records to perform the functions of the row offices.

Bednar said that home rule typically takes more decisions away from voters and puts power in the hands of political appointees "whose loyalty is no longer to the citizens, but to the individuals who appointed them."

"Our government was never designed to be run like a business; it was designed to be run by the citizens through their elected representatives," Bednar said.

Phillips and Miller countered that government not only would shrink under the charter — beginning with the elimination of the row offices — but it would provide Lancaster County with greater self-governance.

Miller said that by shifting executive functions to the county administrator, commissioners would be free to focus on long-term planning that can't be accomplished under the county code form of government.

"There is not a long-term strategic plan; there is no long-term fiscal plan — either a budget or a capital spending plan," Miller said. "And that we sorely need to move us into the 21st century."

Both sides countered and questioned each other's facts, while taking questions from a selected panel and an audience of about 130 people.

Sahd said it's impossible to justify adding two more commissioners and then transferring 80 percent to 90 percent of the governing body's duties to the county administrator.

"This is full-time pay for part-time work," Sahd said.

Phillips dismissed Sahd's figures, saying that both the current county administrator, Charles Douts Jr., and his predecessor, Mark Esterbrook, said the proposed charter would add little to their current work load.

"Mark Esterbrook told us that the duties and responsibilities that we wrote for the county administrator reflected 90 to 95 percent of what it was he was doing in that position," Phillips said.

The county now operates under the Pennsylvania County Code, a 400-page state law outlining how various classes of counties — grouped by population — must structure their governments.

A 1972 state law granted counties the option of adopting a home-rule charter if voters authorized a study commission to recommend a new structure and then approved the charter in a referendum.

Six counties adopted home rule since then, five of them in the 1970s. The most recent was Allegheny County in 1998.

Bednar said those six counties have "increased the size of their government by electing or appointing more people into positions of authority and increasing the cost of their government."

Miller took issue with Bednar, noting that almost half the people in the state are governed under home rule because Philadelphia and Allegheny are among the six counties.

Opponents of home rule said they worried that the new charter would empower commissioners to remove elected officials for political reasons.

But Miller said that was not true, that the charter would allow the removal of officials — though not the district attorney or judges — if they lacked specified qualifications, willfully violated the charter, were convicted of a felony or a crime related to the office or failed to perform the duties of office for 60 days (unless illness or a "necessary absence" was involved).

The two sides also sparred over whether a switch to the charter would impact how townships and borough governments in the county operate.

"It's a big unknown and is quite the cause for concern," Sahd said.

But Phillips said Article One of the charter ensures that all county school districts and municipalities will maintain autonomy.

"It is felt by some that this strengthens the relationship between the county and municipalities, more so than currently exists throughout the county code," Phillips said.

E-mail: pburns@lnpnews.com